


paper planes

by feeltripping



Series: atlantic city [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Post-Betrayal, toppy clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 15:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12192990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeltripping/pseuds/feeltripping
Summary: Weather delays Clarke's departure from Polis.(in terms of the series, this is chronologically first)





	paper planes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ticklemetuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ticklemetuesday/gifts).



> thanks to @trashbb on tumblr, for helping me think up a few scenes and giving it a look over for me :)
> 
> and of course, to ticklemetuesday who paid me to write this, helping me out financially <3
> 
> _Snowing is an attempt of God to make the dirty world look clean._

The view from Lexa’s tower is breathtaking. Clarke stands in the window, looking out across earth. _Earth_. She remembers looking at the pictures and the videos and trying to imagine a floor of dirt that gave under her feet instead of metal grating that clanged. 

Lexa’s rooms have the best view. Curtains that flutter in the breeze and the green stretched out in front of her, more green than Clarke ever imagined could possibly exist. She feels Lexa behind her, the quiet strength of her presence. “We went on a field trip once,” she says, without turning around. “It’s like--like in school, we would go places.” She stops. “Do you have school?”

She winces when she asks, the way it sounds despite her best intentions, but Lexa’s voice is calm and smooth and unoffended. “Sometimes. In some villages. I imagine it’s very different from what yours was in the sky.”

“Our teacher took us to the farm station. I remember it--I’d seen plants before, here and there, but...” But rows and rows of green and how the earth smelled dark and rich and strong and so different from the dirt that gathered under her fingernails and behind her ears. Clarke smiles, distant and fond. She remembers chattering at her father a mile a minute and how they watched old documentaries together and how he paused it so she could look up the names of each plant and say them together, stumbling over the latin. “It was incredible.”

She waits, but Lexa waits longer, patient and quiet and the light flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat, where Clarke can’t quite tear her eyes away. She remembers Lexa’s fingers slipping the gag out of her mouth, the way that same throat swallowed when she pressed a knife’s edge to it. 

“It’s nothing compared to this,” Clarke says, and it’s not--it’s not what she meant to say, perhaps. 

Everything was lush in her books and the videos, vibrant emerald green and wet with dew and the sleekness of the fauna. Then she crash landed and felt the thorns on the vines and the sharp teeth of the animals--she’s gotten word that a lightning strike during the storm last week killed three in Arkadia, collapsing the roof on top of a family. She’d watched that storm from just here, safe in Lexa’s tower, mouth open in awe at the roar of thunder in her chest and the cracks of brilliant light across the sky, blue and pink and purple.

But Lexa smiles, that odd half mouthed gentling curve. “Cruelness is its own beauty,” she says, and is drawn away by an advisor before Clarke can ask her to explain.

++

Clarke was given saddlebags at her farewell dinner. Tough leather that still felt supple in her hands, stamped with an odd crest. “An approximation of your people,” another ambassador told her. “Artistic perhaps, but pretty, no?”

“ _Mochof_ ,” Clarke had said, clumsy, and she packed her things in before carrying them down to the stables.

 

Horses are still--still too big for Clarke to feel fully comfortable around them. But the mare she rode to Polis is a sweetheart, and always whickers and noses at Clarke’s pockets for apple slices and cheese cubes. Clarke looks at the saddle hanging on the wall. She looks at her saddlebags. The mare make a questioning noise. “Yeah,” Clarke tells her, “me neither.”

Lexa’s boots thump gentle on the wooden floor, muffled by the straw. “She’s a good horse.”

“They told me her name, I think?” Clarke ruffles her mare’s mane, silky soft and neatly trimmed. “I didn’t catch it.” She takes a brush off a rack hanging on the wall and starts long broad strokes, reassuring, patting the mare’s flanks every so often. “Something fearsome, I think.” She feeds the mare a chunk of apple core from her pocket. “She’s a warrior.

Lexa leans out of the barn and calls out to the stablemaster, the harsh chop of trigedasleng and the deferential response. She closes the door against the whistle of the wind and looks like she’s fighting a smile. “The closest translation is… Potato.”

Clarke pauses her brushing. “Are you messing with me?”

“Potato,” Lexa repeats. Her smile blooms. “A fearsome steed.”

“Don’t listen,” Clarke tells Potato. She drops her voice to a murmur. “You can bite her, I’ll protect you.”

Potato’s ears prick. She regards Lexa for signs of apples. 

Lexa murmurs, low and rumbling soft. Potato snorts out a huff of air and goes back to nosing expectantly at Clarke’s pant pockets. Lexa’s shoulder bumps hers--she moves around Clarke to the other side, and they brush Potato’s coat until it gleams.

It’s quiet, the sounds of other horses moving, the odd shout echoing from outside. Lexa, as always, is softer when they’re alone. Her warpaint is faded by the end of the day, the lines less sharp, the shadows less deep around her eyes. “I’m going to rename her,” Clarke decides.

Lexa reaches for the brush in Clarke’s hands. Clarke jerks away, withdrawing, and Lexa doesn’t push the issue, turning to put away her own brush and neaten Clarke’s messy pile of saddlebags. “Oh?”

Clarke clears her throat. “Y-yes. Arkon.”

Lexa’s profile is in sharp relief, the dim light through the window and the glow of her skin, the cut of her jaw. “Arkon.”

A name plucked from thin air, and Clarke fumbles to form an explanation. “Well, it’s like. It’s like the Ark. Because she’s going to take me home.”

The line of Lexa’s shoulders is tight, her eyes obscured. “Is that what the Ark is to you?”

Clarke swallows. “It… should be. It was, once.” She remembers her father: the sound of his laugh, his hand tousling her hair. “It’s not the same.”

“Still...” Lexa trails off. She lays a hand on Arkon’s newly christened neck. “Hei, Arkon.” She bends and touches her lips to Arkon’s nose. They both pause, stock still in the moonlight. “A good name.” She moves away, breaking the moment, and then lingers in the doorway, head tilted.

“Walk me to my room?” Clarke asks, and Lexa smiles her little half smile again, the one Clarke thinks might be just for her.

++

Lexa turns left instead of right at the footpath fork. Clarke hesitates, eyebrow arched. “I’d like to show you something.” Lexa holds out her hand. “The path is rocky, here, and not lit.”

“I’ll manage,” Clarke says, brushing past; she hears Lexa’s boots on the dirt after a pause. The path leads around away from where the doorways and roads are lit by torches, and soon she can’t see more than six inches in front of her. She stumbles three times before sighing. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she warns, flailing an arm out.

Infuriatingly, as soon as Lexa grips her elbow and guides her, every step is smooth and she can look up at the sky, almost as dark as it was on the Ark.

“Do you have named for them?” she asks, abrupt. “The shapes of the stars, the patterns?”

She can’t quite see Lexa, just a dark blur under the light of the stars. But she can hear her breathing, the way it shifts, the almost silent noise of her boots on the dirt. “Yes,” Lexa says.

Clarke smiles at the sky. “So do we.”

++

Lexa takes her to a lake. “There’s a plant,” she says, helping Clarke make her way down the bank to the faintly rocky beach. “It grows mostly in the rivers.”

Clarke almost falls on her ass, Lexa’s hands steadying her, because the lake is--it’s lit up from under the surface. It glows a deep fluorescent green that should be eerie and spooky but instead makes the leaves glow green and lush and reflects the stars back in its still waters. “It’s beautiful,” she says, when she can regain her breath. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s toxic,” Lexa notes. Clarke sighs. “And beautiful,” Lexa allows.

“Can we swim in it? I mean, is it toxic to touch?” She can feel Lexa hesitate. “Please?”

“Keep your face above the water.”

Clarke grins. She shucks her clothes quickly, shuffling over to a tree to hang her shirt and her cloak and her pants from a branch, leaving her in her underthings. She stuffs her socks into her boots and starts to wade in. “Aren’t you coming with?”

“I don’t care to disturb the water.”

Clarke freezes. She looks at the water for signs of something with big teeth. Then she turns and glares. “Joking isn’t a good look on you.”

Lexa shrugs, a hint of a smile playing at her face. She strips. She’s forgone the pauldron today, and her belt buckle clinks when it drops to the ground. Clarke splashes into the shallows of the lake, but Lexa glides, her tan skin sinking into the water, swallowing her up. 

Clarke cups her fingers under one of the glowing plants, beneath the surface. She lifts it up to feel its leaves on her fingers, vaguely slimy, and to see how the glow lights up her veins through her skin. “What do you call it?”

Lexa says something in trigedasleng, and then again, slower, so Clarke can copy it. “It’s seasonal,” she adds. “Just before the first winter storms, and just before spring breaks through.” She hesitates. “There’s a festival,” she adds, carefully neutral. “On the river, before it thaws. The light is very pretty through the ice. Perhaps you’d like to see it.”

Clarke hesitates in turn. “Maybe. I--We haven’t decided when we’re coming back, but yeah. Yeah, probably before winter’s over.”

Lexa nods, sharp and pleased. “Octavia and the caravans of supplies will have reached Arkadia by now,” she adds, crisp. She dips her face below the surface and slicks her hair back with her hands, exhaling at the cold night air across her face. “When do you leave tomorrow?”

Clarke gapes. “In the afternoon,” she replies, and then: “didn’t you say not to put my face in?”

“It’s toxic if ingested,” Lexa informs her. “Moderate amounts, but it’s best to keep it out of your mouth all together.”

“I could have managed that if you’d told me,” Clarke mutters.

Lexa’s silence is faintly pointed. 

Clarke wonders if splashing the Heda of the grounder people with mild to moderate toxic lake runoff would constitute an act of war. While she considers her options, Lexa moves past her, going deeper, and Clarke follows. They stop when the water is just below their collarbones, the ripples of their movements getting slower and softer until everything is still and quiet and their breath coasts across the surface in a fog, goosebumps rising on their skin. 

Lexa is watching her, eyes dark, face shadowed, water droplets on the tip of her nose and beaded on her cheekbones. She is (she has always been) breathtaking, but it’s the quiet moments that make Clarke _want_. The way her face relaxes when they’re alone, how she’s always (from the beginning, two fingers on her knife and her grin at a cure for the Reapers) allowed Clarke to see that she is Heda but she is vulnerable too. 

Lexa comes closer and closer--then stops, her nose dipped beneath the water, the insects singing in the trees. 

“I can’t forgive you,” Clarke says, and is startled by the sound of her own voice, spoken without a string of thought and purpose linking her brain to her tongue. “For Mount Weather. I can’t.” Her words blow bubbles, disrupting the reflection of the moon and the stars on the water. 

She can’t quite tell but she think Lexa almost smiles--not mirthful, but quiet and just as enveloping as the lake, ghostly lit by the glow of the plants. They start making their way back to the shore, and Lexa waits until Clarke has dressed, shivering at the chill of the air on her skin and the water sticking her clothes to her back and her legs. “I would not expect you to,” is all she says, before offering her hand.

Clarke can’t pretend not to know what Lexa is responding to. She tucks her hands into her pockets and stumbles all the way back to where the path widens and smoothes out and the torches allow her to see well enough not to trip. 

++

One of Lexa’s personal housemaids wakes Clarke before the sun rises. Her eyes are gritty from just a few hours of sleep and her jaw cracks when she yawns. She tries to smile at the girl and mumbles something that might resemble a thank you when she’s given a few slices of fruit and a crunchy slice of bread. 

The air is painfully crisp, frigid enough it makes her nostrils tingle when she inhales. Her exhales blow out in thick foggy clouds. She stuffs her pants into her boots and makes her way to the stables. “I thought I was leaving in the afternoon,” she says to the man holding the reins to her horse, already saddled up and ready to go.

He thrusts the reins at her, grunts, and leaves, pointing up to the sky as he goes. Clarke fumbles not to drop the reins, craning her head up--the sun has just risen and the sky is grey, completely covered in clouds. 

“It’s going to storm.” Lexa is standing at the head of the path leading towards the gates. “I had hoped moving up your departure would get you out of its path.” She’s frowning, her gaze on the clouds, darker and angry looking on the horizon. “I think you should delay your trip. I will send a single scout out to inform your people.”

Clarke’s shoulders set, stubborn. “If one person can go ahead of the storm, shouldn't it be me?”

“I’ve seen you ride,” Lexa reminds her, blunt. “My rider is a better rider, a better hunter, a better navigator. More likely to survive if caught by the storm, more likely to reach your people quicker.”

Clarke settles her weight on her heels, her lips pulling back into a snarl. “And if I insist?”

She’s aware suddenly of the guards standing at the doors, more at the gate, the hundreds of grounders in the city that surrounds her. Lexa’s voice is carefully neutral. “I would prefer it not come to that.”

The man has returned, his hand held out for the reins. They all stand still and wait for Clarke to choose.

++

“I’m honoured you’ve chosen to join me for a meal,” Lexa says at dinner. Clarke had sulked, aggressively, in her private rooms through lunch and finally allowed her hunger to win out over her pride, agreeing to dine with Lexa in her quarters when a housegirl had knocked at her door and invited her in clumsy English.

Clarke sticks her table knife into a large root vegetable on her plate, shredding it into tiny pieces before eating it. “If I’m a fancy prisoner I might as well enjoy the perks.”

Lexa, to her credit, refuses to rise to the bait. It’s an especially weak insult, since barely fifteen minutes after Lexa canceled her trip it started to hail and hasn’t stopped for hours and hours, the ice getting larger and falling with greater force, pinging off the stone walls and the roofs hard enough they have to raise their voices to be heard at the table. Clarke imagines being on horseback in the storm and smothers a wince. She hides it by taking a sip from her cup, a sweet hot drink that tastes faintly of alcohol and buttered spices. 

“Do you think I’ll be able to go after the storm passes?”

“There’s a snap in the air,” Lexa tells her, her eyes gone faintly distant. She refocuses on Clarke. “It depends on how heavy the snow is. The terrain from here to your people can be difficult, and snowfall would make it a challenge to traverse.”

Clarke puts down her fork. “I don’t want to be here,” she says, blunt. “And I can’t help thinking you’re doing a lot to convince me I should stay.”

Lexa’s face flickers, then smoothes out. “Clarke, I--”

“You swore,” Clarke says, pitched low even though they’re alone in the room. “You swore to me on your knees.”

Lexa swallows, cut short. She takes a visible breath. “What do you think,” she says, careful and measured, “would happen to our alliance if you died and all your people had was my word it happened outside my custody?”

Clarke opens her mouth at the word custody, but Lexa doesn’t let her interrupt again.

“I believe your oath was true. And I even believe some of your people would honour it. But not all. If you want to go home, I want to help you.” She meets Clarke’s eyes, her own oddly serene. “But we are leaders, Clarke. And our decisions are not about what we want.”

++

It does snow, that night. The hail stopped and Clarke leaned out the window in her room to look at the little balls of ice on the sill and the edges of the roof. Hold one in her hand and then, because no one is looking, in her mouth to see if it tastes just the same as rainwater when it melts on her tongue.

But later, when the sun has gone down and she’s again, packed her things to leave in the morning. She sees the flakes in the torchlight and almost trips over herself getting to the window, leaning out as far as she can. They melt on her fingertips, tiny delicate flakes of white, and she tips her head back to catch one on her tongue.

She waits only a few minutes before giving in and going to knock on Lexa’s door. Lexa answers within seconds, eyebrow arched questioningly. “Clarke?”

“It’s snowing,” Clarke blurts, and is grabbing Lexa’s wrist, charging into Lexa’s room to drag her to the window, before Lexa can respond. “Look!”

“So it is,” Lexa agrees.

Clarke huffs. “Look,” she insists. 

Lexa pokes her head out the window, pushing the curtains aside obediently. “It’s getting heavier,” she notes with a frown. “We’ll need people shoveling within the hour to keep the main roads clear--”

“Lexa,” Clarke says, “I’m about five seconds from pulling a knife on you again.”

It’s jokier than she meant it, but it makes Lexa top and look at her. “You’ve never seen snow before.”

“Pictures and videos.” Lexa’s brow furrows at the unfamiliar concept, but Clarke steps closer, nudging her to look back out the window. “I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“Cold?” Lexa guesses.

Clarke looks at her--the hair escaping her braids in wisps, the tiny lines around her eyes pronounced for someone as young as she is, the way her lips move at the corners while she thinks, the scar just behind her ear that’s so small and faded Clarke has never noticed it before. “Beautiful,” she says, and the word stays between them instead of fading away.

++

In the morning the entire city is white. Clarke puts on four layers of clothing and two pairs of socks and the heavy fur lined cloak that was waiting on a chair for her when she woke up and ventures out, squinting against the sun winking off the snow. Her boots sink with a crunch and she skirts the workers wielding shovels and buckets, clearing the roads enough so people can walk through the city streets. Children race around in hats and scarves and gloves, shrieking and flinging snowballs at each other. 

Behind her, a gona shadows her steps, quiet and unimposing and glaring away the curious faces that come to greet her and then scurry away to whisper. She thinks his name might be Alek; she knows Lexa herself assigned him to act as Clarke’s bodyguard in Polis. She’s trying not to chafe too hard at it. 

She turns, suddenly, around a corner and then stops, waits until he barrels around it to get her in his line of sight again. “Where does it go?” she asks.

He almost trips over himself not to step on her, skidding to an abrupt stop. He hunches in, a hulk of man trying to look small and nonthreatening for her sake; it softens her enough towards him that she offers a smile while she asks again. “The snow,” she clarifies. “When they carry it away, where does it go?”

“To the field,” he says, heavily accented. He points towards the west side of the city, where a few farms ring the outskirts just outside the treeline of the forest. 

“Can I go there?”

Alek’s eyes go wide. He stammers for a full thirty seconds before Clarke takes mercy on him. 

“I’ll ask Lexa.”

“Yes,” he agrees immediately, visibly relieved. “ _Heda_.”

++

Clarke waits until nightfall. Lexa opens the door before she’s even knocked. She stands there, still fully dressed except her feet are bare and her hair is down, loose curls and faintly damp from washing. She waits.

“I saw a film,” she says, “in school.”

“You’re dressed for the cold,” Lexa responds. “Should I send someone to stoke your fire?”

Clarke coughs. “No, no--I meant to say. I saw a film in school once.”

“You said that.” Lexa tilts her head. “You are my guest, Clarke. If you want something, all you have to do is ask.”

Clarke steps closer and Lexa yields, her heel clipping the doorjamb, her back turned until it’s against the wall. Barefoot against Clarke’s boots she’s just the smallest bit shorter, her frame slighter. It’s the first time Clarke has felt bigger than her. She stops just short of their chests touching, one of her feet between Lexa’s and the insides of their knees brushing. Her voice comes out almost odd, whisper soft but loud in the space between them. “Is that all I have to do?”

“That’s all you’ve ever had to do.”

Clarke’s breath catches. Her voice cracks in the middle of the word: “Liar.”

Lexa’s hand starts to rise--Clarke remembers how gentle it was on the back of her own head, the surprising plushness of Lexa’s lips against hers--and then it falls back by her side. She tilts her head instead, not quite baring her neck but not close enough to anything else. “Do you want to hurt me, Clarke?”

Clarke’s head jerks back, recoiling. “I, I--”

Lexa tilts her head just a single degree of an angle more, Clarke’s eyes fixed on her jugular. “Would it make you feel better?”

Clarke remembers how hard it was, Atom gasping on the ground in front of her, Bellamy watching her with his dark eyes, how she thought it would take more pressure but the knife went in soft and slid out clean, the first person she ever killed. She remembers how easy the next five hundred were. Her throat works. “I want to go to the west field.”

She exhales, all the air leaving her lungs in a woosh. She steps back and hides her shaking hands behind her back. Touches the knife hidden in her sleeve at her wrist to make sure it’s still there. Lexa pushes herself off the wall--Clarke realizes Lexa’s knees had buckled at some point, but now she’s standing straight, her shoulders back. Her voice is calm and measured when she responds: “I’ll get my coat.”

++

The field is a blanket of white, the fresh snowfall clean atop the dirtied snow hauled away from the streets and the roofs. Clarke scoops a handful up, feeling it chill her hands through her gloves. She packs a snowball, same as she saw the children do, then bites into it like an apple. It’s so cold it makes her teeth hurt, and she smiles through the twinge of pain, the ice crunching between her teeth. 

Lexa trails her, letting Clarke meander into the drifts, some as deep as her upper thigh. “What did your vi-videos,” she asks, stumbling over the unfamiliar word, “what did they show?”

“Angels,” Clarke tells her. Lexa’s confusion deepens. “Like this.” Clarke lets herself fall backwards, feels the sudden cold on her back. Spreads her arms and moves them up and down, opens and closes her legs. She stops and holds her hand up. “Help me stand?”

Lexa’s palm is warm against hers, firm. Clarke can feel the tendons in her wrist flex, the strength in Lexa’s sword arm when she pulls Clarke to her feet. They take a step back and look at the imprint Clarke had left. “Angel,” Lexa says, like she’s testing the word. Then she yelps, because Clarke has turned, both hands on Lexa’s chest, and shoved her over until she’s sprawled in the snow. She moves, slow, copying Clarke’s movements, then holds her hand up.

Clarke hesitates. “You left me,” she says, quiet but achingly loud in the silence of the night. “You left me there alone. And you brought me back with my hands tied behind my back.”

Lexa stays still, her hand still outstretched. 

“I do,” Clarke admits, “I do want to hurt you.”

She takes Lexa’s hand and pulls her to her feet.

++

They’re dripping by the time they make it back to the tower, and Clarke’s teeth are chattering too hard to protest when Lexa steers them into Lexa’s quarters instead of walking Clarke to her own rooms. Lexa strips her of her jacket, businesslike, and undoes the clasps and buttons of her two overshirts. Her hands drop to Clarke’s pants and she stops, stepping back. She busies herself with retrieving a change of clothes from the other side of the room, pausing to perk up the fire and hang a pot of water from the posts in the hearth. “It’ll be warm soon.”

Clarke shivers, holding her hands out to the heat and flexing them to feel the creak of the cold start to fade from her joints and knuckles. Lexa hands her a fresh shirt, and Clarke’s mouth is open to thank her when Lexa kneels and steals all the words from Clarke’s tongue. Her fingers are nimble on the laces of Clarke’s boots, and then on her thick socks, and soon she’s barefoot in front of the fire, her toes flexing on the rug. Lexa touches her ankles, the tickle of her neatly trimmed nails sliding up to the back of Clarke’s calf, the prickle of hairs on Lexa’s fingerpads. 

“Lexa,” Clarke says, and can’t figure out what comes next. “You’re the one who left me at Mount Weather,” she says, and remembers the first time she saw Lexa on her throne. She feels like a broken record. “I killed them all.” _Wanheda_ , she remembers, is who she is now.

Lexa frees Clarke’s belt from her pantloops, dropping it to the ground, and offers an echo of her own. “We are what we are.”

“I’m still leaving,” Clarke says. “I have to go home.”

Lexa hums in her throat. “What do you _want_ , Clarke?”

Clarke swallows, hard. Finn was soft and careful, almost clumsy, and he stopped to ask if she was okay while he laid his sweaty face in the crook of her neck. Niylah was quick and hurried, she didn’t stop until Clarke pushed her head away and stood to put her pants back on. Lexa kissed her once--twice--in a tent, swore fealty and said all Clarke has to do is ask. “I want you on your knees,” Clarke admits. As always, she hasn’t been able to figure out what she wants before the opportunity to ask for it has passed.

Lexa kisses her hipbone, beneath her half-undone pants. Her hands draw Clarke’s pants down, then her underwear, until they’re both pooled around her ankles. She holds Clarke steady while she steps out of them, kicks them away. Bare from the waist down and the last of the snow melted away from Lexa’s hair, still wet and chilled against Clarke’s hand when she slides it around to the back of Lexa’s head and draws her in, her legs spreading. 

Lexa noses at the inside of Clarke’s thigh, her breath warm across Clarke’s damp skin. When Clarke exerts pressure she lets herself be led, and the first long drag of her tongue makes Clarke gasp, going up on her tipoes before rocking down into Lexa’s mouth. She moans when Lexa lets her teeth skim against her, pinprick sensations, and Lexa does it three more times, until Clarke shudders and starts a grind on Lexa’s chin. 

Lexa licks into her, her tongue inside Clarke, wetness smeared around her mouth and up her cheeks, Clarke’s white knuckled grip on her hair as she guides Lexa roughly to where she wants her. She pants, open mouthed and her head tipped back, gaze fixed unseeing on the high ceiling, the flicker of the candles against the walls and hanging in their iron cages. “Oh,” she murmurs, when Lexa finds just the right spot at just the right angle. “Fuck,” she manages, when Lexa zeroes in on it with unerring accuracy, her hands gripping at the back of Clarke’s thighs, at her ass, the small of her back and the flare of her hips. 

“I’m,” Clarke chokes out, and--when her body shudders and clenches and her knees buckle and her vision narrows down and then expands all at once, explosive--Lexa catches her, and bears her safely to the earth.

 

Clarke floats back to herself, straddling Lexa’s lap, her cheek on Lexa’s shoulder, Lexa on her back on the rug, her foot hooked over Clarke’s calf. She kisses under Lexa’s ear, soft and then harder, claiming. She growls when Lexa’s shirt is too tight for her to get her hands all the way up it, leaning back to tug it over Lexa’s head, Lexa’s arms rising to accommodate her. Lexa reciprocates, stripping Clarke’s shirt away and then her breastband, tossing the discarded clothing aside. Lexa’s mouth flutters across Clarke’s chest before closing around a nipple and making Clarke moan again. 

“The bed,” Clarke says, and then: “I want you on the bed.”

The slow awkward stumble to their feet and backwards towards the bed, Clarke fumbling to get Lexa naked. Lexa with her hair fanned out on the furs underneath her, Clarke’s hand on Lexa’s thigh as she hikes it up to rock against her, wet and slick and burning and the feel of Lexa’s short damp curls against Clarke’s grinding palm. Her toes on the back of Clarke’s calf and her head tipped back fully now, Clarke’s teeth sunk into it and the single drop of blood staining Clarke’s tongue black. Lexa’s quiet noises, the faintly raised lines of her tattoos against Clarke’s fingers, the fine white scars on her skin and how it’s paler across her torso where the sun doesn’t kiss it. What Clarke’s name sounds like amid a string of gasped trigedasleng, the way her voice cracks when Clarke moves inside her just so. How the flush in her cheeks fades slowly while she catches her breath and runs her fingers through the snarls in Clarke’s hair. What it feels like to sleep pressed so close to someone she can feel their heartbeat and their chest rise and fall like, in sync, like they’re one and the same and endless.

And after, the last moment before sleep. Clarke’s hand on Lexa’s bare chest over Lexa’s heart, her lips against Lexa’s shoulder, their hips slotted together. Clarke’s whispered confession across the back of Lexa’s neck. “I don’t want to hurt you, Lexa.” And the other words, the ones she swallows down and keeps on the back of her tongue: _I want to love you in ways I don’t know how_.

++

When Clarke wakes up it’s just starting to get light outside the window; Lexa’s eyes are already open. “Is this it?” Clarke asks, after she’s licked the sour taste away from her mouth. “Is this what we are?”

Lexa’s voice is deeper first thing in the morning, raspy with the remnants of sleep. “What do you want to be, Clarke?”

The blanket is across Lexa’s hips, her chest bare and her skin faintly pebbled in the early morning chill. Clarke lays her head in the cradle of Lexa’s hips and traces the scars on Lexa’s ribs, dragging her nail back and forth until it very faintly welts, a knifeblade thin just barely raised black line that connects them. She draws the constellations her father taught her as best as she can remember them--when she’s done there are still scars left unconnected. “What do you want, Lexa?”

She expected Lexa to hesitate, to ponder, but Lexa’s reply is swift, her tone one of acceptance. “You.” She must feel the surprise in Clarke’s body because she tilts her chin to look down at Clarke and smile. “Wanting is not the same as having, Clarke. Head over heart.”

Clarke shakes her head, her hair dragging on Lexa’s skin. “It won’t be forever. We--we’re going to have elections, Jaha, Kane, my mom. And--and Aden.”

Lexa’s hand moves Clarke’s hair out of her face, tucking it gently behind her ear. “Commanders don’t retire, Clarke.”

Clarke goes up on one elbow, kissing every rib and the point of each hip, the dip of her belly button, her palms parting Lexa’s legs as she wiggles down the bed to suck a series of black marks on the side of each of Lexa’s thighs, one and then the other. She pauses, her breath hot and damp across Lexa’s fluttering entrance. “Tell me you’ll be the first.” She drags her tongue across Lexa before she can answer, causing her hips to rock and her back to arch.

“I thought,” Lexa manages, and then the rest of her sentence is lost in a series of moans and the wet sloppy noises of Clarke’s mouth on her, her heels planted on the bed and Clarke’s hands holding her hips down, her toes curling. Clarke eats her out until Lexa is making high pitched keens, until her legs are trembling and her head is thrown back, the hickies Clarke left on the base of her throat in stark relief against the pillow. 

Clarke pauses, every so often, to let Lexa catch her breath and rock in tiny lazy circles, sweat beading on her hairline and the backs of her knees, down her calves. “What did you think?” Clarke asks, darkening her marks on Lexa’s thighs during the break. 

Lexa’s pupils are blown, her hair a mess of curls and tangles. “I thought you didn’t want me to lie to you again.”

Clarke thinks about Aden on Lexa’s throne and Lexa’s body on a pyre, the torch in Clarke’s hand and Lexa’s blank clouded eyes, the way her skin would pale in death and how all the warmth that’s currently underneath Clarke’s body would leech away. She dips her head and makes Lexa come three times, until Lexa is squirming and twisting and panting harshly, her cries loud enough to be heard outside the room.

++

Lexa is called away at breakfast, leaving Clarke with a warm bowl of oats and sugar on top, a full pitcher of fresh fruit juice, bread spread thick with butter and jam. She eats until she groans and staggers back to her room to take a nap. When she wakes up she’s told Lexa will return for dinner, if Clarke would care to join her in Heda’s quarters, and that the weather has cleared up enough for Clarke to leave in two days time. Clarke thanks the messenger and then sits on the edge of the bed and looks around the room.

Her gloves and scarf on the table, her cloak across the back of a chair. Her sketchbook on the bedside table (inside, a rough rendition of Lexa peaceful in sleep, the expression not quite right but she has time to fix it, doesn’t she?), her boots by the door, a trinket puzzle from the market on the bed from where she was fiddling with it before she fell asleep. The warmth of the fire in its hearth and her clean clothes in the chest at the foot of the bed, basins of fresh water and her hairbrush and a tub in the attached washroom. Her dirty socks in a ball by the wall because she hasn’t put them in the other room yet, the radio Raven has yet to fix next to them. Her extra knife under the pillow and Lexa’s rooms just down the hall.

She rips a page from her sketchbook and uses the knife under the pillow to sharpen a chunk of charcoal into a fine point. 

++

Dinner is stew, savory and rich and good enough Clarke drags her finger across the bowl after she’s done to lick the brown gravy away with a satisfied sigh. Lexa watches her, her posture lounging and a satisfied glint in her eye. “A messenger came to my door today,” Clarke says, carefully nonchalant. 

Lexa’s tone matches her. “Oh?”

“He said I could leave in two days.”

Lexa shifts her weight. “I’d like to send more people with you than we originally discussed. In case the weather shifts again.”

“I was thinking about your scouts, like the one you sent before.”

Lexa’s brow furrows. “They travel light--you will be going with your belongings, a tent, further supplies--”

“I was thinking you could send another scout instead.”

Lexa’s mouth closes with a click. She blinks, twice.

“I was thinking,” Clarke says, plain and bare, “that I could stay here, through the winter.” She plucks the note she’d written earlier from where she’d tucked it into the folds of her shirt. “I wrote a letter to my mom, explaining. She’ll know it’s genuine. If you could…” she trails off, suddenly uncertain.

Lexa takes it, their fingers brushing. “I’ll send it with a scout,” she says, gentle and hopeful. “He’ll ride back with a response.”

Clarke smiles, a sudden rush of relief lightening the tension in her shoulders. “Mochof, Heda.”

Lexa smiles--her full smile, so wide and blindingly bright it makes Clarke’s chest constrict. “You’re welcome, Ambassador.”

++

Clarke moves her things into Lexa’s room while Lexa is out handpicking a scout to carry Clarke’s message. Another table appeared while she was out patting Arkon on the nose and promising to visit her again soon with apples and sugar cubes, and she drops her sketchbook and gloves on it before throwing everything else into the chest and dragging it down the hall until gona trip over themselves in horror at her going without aid, carrying it into Lexa’s room without a single sideways look or muttered comment.

Lexa returns within the hour. “She leaves at dawn,” she informs Clarke. “Should be back within two weeks, at most.” She pauses, taking in Clarke’s things among her own, and then the dip of Clarke’s shirt, exposing a few inches of cleavage. 

“I’ll still have to go back,” Clarke says, reluctant to break the cheery mood. “But I-- I am an Ambassador.”

“So you are,” Lexa agrees. “I travel in the spring,” she offers. “Into the summer. My duties will take me through Arkadia.”

Clarke smiles, tentative. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” 

Clarke stands. “I thought of something else.”

Lexa watches her advance, refusing to give ground. “Did you.”

“I did,” Clarke says, and kisses her. It’s not as sweet as the first time, Lexa’s gentle pressure and the gentle bump of their noses when she switched angles, Clarke’s hand coming up to just barely press at Lexa’s elbow. But it is deeper, and longer, and at the end, decidedly filthier, tugging clothes away and Clarke backing her up until they’re sprawled on the bed again, Lexa’s huge impossibly soft bed layered in woven cloth sheets and thick warm furs. 

Clarke sets her thigh at Lexa’s center, already hot and dripping, straddling Lexa’s leg and it takes them a minute but they figure out a rhythm, Clarke’s back curled and her hips rocking, Lexa’s thrusting up from below and her face tilted up so they can kiss between each slick slide. Lexa comes first, her body stilling and then collapsing into a cacophony of shivers, her breathing harsh and uneven. 

Clarke sits up, bracing her hands on Lexa’s chest and watching her fluttering eyes before they open and lock on Clarke’s, brilliantly green and slowly fading to grey, her hands on Clarke’s waist. Clarke rocks harder, sweat down her spine, constellations on Lexa’s ribcage beneath her palms as she slides them down Lexa’s torso, then up again. One hand cradling Lexa’s jaw, the other curling tentative fingers around Lexa’s throat, just where she’d pressed her knife and spit her hate and swore revenge. Lexa tilts her head back and arches her back and Clarke comes, just like that, absolution in the way their names sound on each other’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ feeltripping


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